


Stripped

by ivanolix



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon - TV, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, Multi, Season/Series 01, Sexual Content, Threesome - F/F/M, Torture, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:28:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darken doesn't want Kahlan broken, he just wants her exposed. Denna understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stripped

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a Reckoning AU where Denna never failed Darken, and Shota never told Kahlan that Richard was sent to the future instead of dead

Like a dark cloud he stormed from the dungeon, eyes sharper than his dagger. The cell door was closed behind him with a clink, but he didn't check the lock. His eyes were on her.

Wanting, though not from her. Craving something dark, angry at its lack.

Denna waited, spine erect, unsure. The Mother Confessor had never angered him before.

Darken grabbed her agiel before she could, sliding it from its sheath and pushing it into her gloved hand, the black veins of agony sliding up both their wrists at once. "Mistress Denna, our _guest_ thinks she knows more about pain than us." Whatever he left unspoken of his conversation with Kahlan Amnell, it made his words bitter darts. "Such a challenge will not go unanswered."

"My lord," she answered smoothly, wrapping her hand around her weapon and smiling softly. "Do you wish me to attend you while you break her?"

Darken paused, lips tight, eyes not quite meeting hers for a moment. More than anger was dammed up behind that face, and a part of Denna ached to know. To be let into that mind. It was only a few seconds before he answered, voice low and dark, "I do not like her screams."

She would have opened her mouth to question the words, coming from a man who had broken her himself without flinching, but he was in her space then, intrusive. The faint scent of spiced oil on his skin reminded her of evenings spent with sweat and fluids and moans of ecstasy. It sent a little tremble through her body, enhanced by the agiel's pain already flooding each vein.

Darken Rahl lifted his thumb, brushing the pad across her lower lip while meeting her eyes. "I don't want her broken. I want her to give in."

Denna smiled just slightly, eyes cool, resisting the urge to flick her tongue out across his finger. To any other person, perhaps even some Mord'Sith, such words would have produced confusion. But she understood. Pain was the skin she lived in, and she was familiar with every last part of it. Every distinction between varieties.

She didn't need to nod. He knew she had captured his full meaning, and she would not fail him.

Darken Rahl walked past her out of the dungeon, brushing against her hip in passing. She turned, watching him disappear, robes sweeping along the well-kept stone of his dungeons. Her tongue finally flicked over her lip, a brief smile for herself following shortly. This, finally, was a gift worthy of Lord Rahl's right hand.

Kahlan Amnell had resisted the slow torture of solitude and hopelessness and carefully crafted taunts. She had resisted every tempting offer, even those that made Denna's eyebrows rise at their generosity. Six months in that dungeon since Richard Cypher and Cara had vanished with Orden, and the only result was that she had upended Darken Rahl's world. None of them would say it out loud...except perhaps Kahlan just had.

No more. Denna had suggested the swift way from the beginning, the one they both cherished, but Darken had shied from it. No more. He'd not laid a finger on Kahlan, or allowed anyone else to, despite her captivity. No more. The darkness would surround the captive woman, and not even her white dress would shine. Not when Denna covered it in blood.

Kahlan would not be broken. But she would surrender all the same. Denna smiled once more, and turned to the guard, not bothering to note his flinch. "Have Berdine and Raina take the Mother Confessor to the temple. I will await them shortly."

*

Water. A sip, a cupful, a river and an ocean—that was all her body craved. That, or maybe she could settle for the moisture that made Denna's lips glisten. She couldn't look away from them, the blood-red bow that made her ready to beg for something to drink.

Unconsciously she licked her own lips, but they were cracked and with a sting she tasted blood. A laugh nearly gurgled from her throat. She was so thirsty.

Denna moved like a smear of blood on Aydindril's walls, a blur of red and white that was never far enough away. Never close enough. Never...never just right. Kahlan felt the burn of the agiel creep up her hip, searing its mark, making her throat tighten as the sensation blocked out her aborted laugh. Pain, pain, pain.

But as soon as the agiel was gone and she could groan, blink the world back into focus, Denna was too far away. Beauty and relief were waiting with her, and Kahlan craved them. It was all she could hope for, and she had stopped caring days ago that she had to receive pain and humiliation first. Wearily, she'd accepted compromise as her only choice.

She might have gone a little insane. It made her feel like laughing again, that thought, and then Denna was pressing close enough so that the breath caught in her throat.

"What do you feel, my pet?" the Mord'Sith murmured, voice like wet velvet. Her gloved hands traced the bruises on Kahlan's abdomen, where muscles automatically twitched at the added pain.

Kahlan shut her eyes and breathed raggedly, collecting herself, what pieces she hadn't compromised away to make the pain controllable. Her shoulders half numb, she could almost forget that she was hanging there, chains digging into her wrists, clad only in tattered rags. A trickle of blood tickled down her thigh, and somehow she could feel it despite the agony in her ribs and side.

A sharp slap split her lip and she gasped. "Be quick to answer, pet," Denna purred.

"I'm not...your pet," Kahlan said through a shuddering breath, her chest aching.

Denna's answering laugh was cool like water, rippled through the air like a brook, and made Kahlan swallow in miserable thirst. She whispered again, "I'm not."

The agiel was the only answer she received. The Mord'Sith pressed close, sliding an arm intimately around her waist, leather rod sliding up Kahlan's spine in some twisted imitation of a lover's touch. Her body spasmed beneath the torture, but her eyes stayed open. The blood dripped down her chin from her split lip, but Kahlan didn't notice it, her mind focused on other lips than her own.

Denna's mouth, so moist and red, called to her. An oasis from the torment of dehydration, more powerful an urge than escaping from pain ever had been. While Denna's eyes watched every twitch of her body in chains as the agiel screamed, Kahlan longed to just moisten her lips.

When the agiel pulled back, Kahlan didn't have the mind to think before acting. Ignoring the pain—or perhaps just inviting it to do its worst—she took advantage of Denna's mock embrace and leaned forward. She kissed her, and when their mouths collided she moaned at the blissful relief from the _dryness_ that was her body.

Denna repaid her with an agiel to the chin, but this time Kahlan did laugh. It was worth it. Pain was worth it, if the satisfaction was sweet enough.

She wouldn't break, but there was no end to how far she would bend to survive. They'd made her do that much. In the fever of pain and a thousand longings, she wouldn't let herself feel guilty for that.

*

Kahlan could almost fall asleep. She knelt and held onto the foot of Denna's bed as ordered, but her eyes hung wearily shut and her forehead rested against her hands. The whip cracked and lashed across her skin, sending pain cascading through every limb. It didn't matter.

One time she would have wept silently, fists clenched in hatred and misery. Seven months of captivity later, though only weeks into this torment, she nearly dozed and wondered if Denna was proud of her. Hatred was too much effort, and the taste of blood in her mouth explained her state of mind more than a legion of words and thoughts of hopelessness could.

"Kahlan my pet," Denna said when she finally let the whip hang limp, brushing a damp strand of hair off Kahlan's cheek. "You're missing some excellent pain. It would do you good to focus." The threat in her words was so sweet, it almost mattered as little as the pain.

Kahlan swallowed, turning slightly on her knees to look up at the Mord'Sith. The interest in those blue eyes had once been cool, and now it shone warm. Kahlan understood that. Pain, even from a Mord'Sith, didn't have to be a cruelty. Neither did duty, Kahlan had been taught from childhood. Mord'Sith and Confessors shared more than they wanted to admit when it came to hard lessons.

And maybe too, the desires that were the result. Kahlan was done with fighting, and now she had finished with aching as well.

"What is it?" Denna asked, seeing the new look on her face.

"I want to see Lord Rahl," she whispered in response.

*

Her words still stung. Two weeks later, and he still gritted his teeth and wondered if he should have broken her himself. The desire for violence throbbed against his control, and he could see blood when he closed his eyes.

But no.

It was the irony of it, that the words she'd used to hurt him so acutely were true enough that he could not do the same. To hurt her wouldn't satisfy. To see her break would only twist her knife in deeper. Even her screams would leave a poor taste in his mouth.

She called him a monster but she had no idea. He would never lie and deny the title, not when every night his own mind crawled with shadows that he had ceased to fear long ago. Yet the scorn in her voice, the dismissal of everything beneath the surface of that one word, could not stand.

Darken Rahl would let no man—or woman—call him a child broken by pain without love. Not even if it might be true. And especially not if the words reflected back into her own eyes. It was that which made it impossible for him to hurt her. Two halves without a whole, they were, twisted in mirroring shapes. Hurting her would be like attacking his reflection.

Denna would bring her back to that core, stripping every other layer from her. He trusted Denna. She was his, brought to life under the agiel in his grasp so long ago, an expert on everything pain could do. He wanted Kahlan to be like him again. Not a blank slate, ready to grovel and cry for mistress. He just wanted the essence that so many years and so much control and Confessor training had buried. The child who had felt violence, vulnerability, and a desire for revenge that overcame all morality.

Kahlan had whitewashed her darkness, buried it with her past, and Darken wouldn't let her. With the lands at peace as much as they could be when Orden was forever lost to him, it was the only thing that he sought in life. She, the Mother Confessor, was his goal. All that mattered.

He and Denna would show her that she belonged with the broken; those who endured, those who survived, those who felt pain like no one else could. It was not a hope, it was a vow.

*

The bathwater still felt like an agiel on Kahlan's skin, no matter how healed the bruises had become. She gasped and breathed in the steam, letting heat sear away all the mess. It was a clean pain. The best kind.

Denna said nothing while washing Kahlan's hair, as she'd said nothing for the past day. Kahlan's "mistress" hadn't once asked why she wanted to see Darken Rahl. Kahlan liked it that way. She would never be a pet, not like that. She hoped, as Denna's fingers massaged her scalp and made her shiver with near-forgotten pleasure, that the Mord'Sith understood.

The understanding of a Mord'Sith was becoming a guilty thrill. Kahlan didn't know why her mind had brought her here, but again, fighting was too much an effort.

She laughed to herself a little when she stepped out of the bath and saw herself in the mirror. Long dark curls stuck damply to her back and shoulders and fell over her breasts, where her freckles were no longer obscured by the burns and bruises of her torture. Her weight hadn't changed noticeably, leaving the curves of hips and thighs still visible. The light in her eyes was burning again, but not the same. Not as distant. Not merely embers. Kahlan touched the radahan around her neck and wondered what it had felt like to have her powers fully at hand. Did she miss it?

Denna stepped up behind her, eyes tracking Kahlan's naked form before she smirked just slightly. "Like what you see?"

"You didn't break me," Kahlan murmured, fingers still rubbing the metal at her throat. "You shaped me." A tiny half laugh escaped her lips, no longer cracked and dry now that she had given in and asked to see Rahl. "I don't understand it, but I'm still me. I must be mad."

The Mord'Sith smiled in a way that was almost human, small though it was and without warmth. "The only honest people in the world are the ones who can admit their madness."

Kahlan thought of the Con Dar, and wondered if that could explain everything away. Perhaps she'd just manifested that powerful insanity through her entire mind. And maybe Denna was right. It almost felt more honest, even if it made her heart race with fright, the way she was surrendering.

The Mother Confessor never surrendered. Kahlan, it seemed, did. And yet guilt had been left behind long before. Along with hatred, stubbornness, and nostalgia, she couldn't afford such feelings. Darken Rahl ruled the world, all those she'd loved were gone, and she'd accepted pain and darkness as the only way to survive.

Let it be. She was slave to the rules of neither Mord'Sith, nor Rahl, nor Confessors. This was her choice, mad though it might be.

Swallowing again and turning from the mirror, she dressed herself and lifted her eyes to Denna's at last, daring to put authority in her words. "Take me to Lord Rahl."

*

Her gown was blood red. Rahl red. It was the first thing he noticed when Denna brought her in, unshackled, hands loosely clasped before her. The color suited her, and when his gaze shifted up to hers he wondered if it matched the light in her eyes. But perhaps that was but a trick of the fire.

Rising from the chaise, Darken Rahl took a few steps forward. "Kahlan." He'd long ceased taunting her with her old title.

"Lord Rahl," she said, one eyebrow quirking slightly.

Were it not for that light in her eyes, not defiance but something else, he would have thought her fully mad indeed. Even so, with that spark of _her_ still there, he glanced back to Denna and cocked his head.

"Kahlan no longer fights the pain," Denna said, with a hint of admiration and arrogance under her Mord'Sith chill. "In a way, she is nearly a sister of the agiel."

Darken was surprised to see the quick curve of a smile on Kahlan's lips. They were all proud of this. Success he had counted on, but not harmony. Still, he moved closer to Kahlan, met her eyes. "So you have learned under Denna's apt tutelage."

"I have," Kahlan said, eyes never leaving his. "That being broken is a poor description of anything."

Lips pursing momentarily, not quite grasping the full extent of the change he saw in her, he nodded. "And?"

"That judging what you have not lived is childish."

He walked around her, speaking to the back of her head, "And?" He raised an eyebrow towards Denna, marking the warmth in his Mord'Sith's eyes. She liked Kahlan. It was...ironic?

Kahlan glanced over her shoulder so their gazes could meet, and the strength and fire in hers captured his like a magnet, just as much as her words captured his attention. "That darkness lives in all hearts. And sometimes the only way to survive is to learn to live in peace with it."

Darken Rahl could have laughed. He brought his fingers to his lips to half hide a smile that escaped regardless. The conviction, the lack of shame, the way she didn't cringe under the darkness that he and Denna had reawakened—it was the Kahlan he had always seen underneath her Confessor's mask. Everyone wore a mask, and as flame met flame in their locked gaze, he saw that she no longer withdrew from that fact. Like him. Like Denna.

"And can you live in peace with yours, Mother Confessor?" he asked, fingers still rubbing along his lip as he watched her intently. "Darkness does not complement white."

Kahlan's lips tightened just a little, and her eyes for a moment showed that she had not come easily to this place, but she didn't flinch. There was no lie, not even one that she acknowledged deep in her heart. "I no longer wear white, as you see. Whether it was your choice or mine, I don't care anymore."

Denna bowed her head, smiling to herself.

Moving into her space, Darken stood before the woman who had once been a leader for good. Even with all denial stripped from her, leaving disillusionment and emptiness, she had not given up her strength. Oh spirits if she only knew how it made him burn and nearly _tremble_ with want. She was everything that Denna could not be—that he had not grudged his right hand for, but that he still desired. Needed.

He daringly reached out to twist a lock of her hair around his finger, twirling it around and around and around. "What is your choice, Kahlan? What will you do now with your life?" He didn't need to describe the void that was her life now. Without duty, family, friends, or belongings, she was truly free. A freedom that consumed life, perhaps, but that could be mended.

If she so chose. The world stood at a standstill for the few seconds that she didn't answer.

She raised a hand to his cheek at last, drawing him close, and breathed her response against his lips. "Make the world a better place. No more judgment, no more hiding." And with no more than that, she kissed him.

He drew her into his arms and kissed back with a rush of instinctive heat, raw honesty lighting a fire he never thought would be lit. Her words were his, understood by so few and shared by even fewer.

But there was more to share. Darkness enveloped them, but it was not them. They were inside it, separate from it, finding themselves in spite of it. And on finding themselves, their lives burned brightly, not caring if those on the outside saw only darkness.

With no guilt, Kahlan kissed Darken with a moan and an arch of her torso against his. She was dark fire and iron, as if she'd never worn a veneer of purity, and she opened her mouth to his like he was finest wine she was drinking in. Her fingers twisted in his hair, possessive, not hesitating once her choice was made.

The passion made his heart beat like a war drum. Groaning, clasping her to him, he devoured her mouth in a scorching kiss. She didn't resist, she only pushed for more. It was an intimacy right on the verge of discomfort, mutual understanding so deep that it could pierce to their very souls. They were stripped bare, with only the darkness as a misty shroud, and they clung fiercely to each other for acknowledgment that it wouldn't kill them.

It didn't. The world would think them insane, but they'd shut it out with the decision that caring would only bring disaster. All that mattered was the desire spelled out in the speed of their pulses, frantic and needy.

Kahlan tugged at his robes and pushed him back to the bed, her tongue and teeth clashing with his. Breath caught in his throat, he kept his mouth tangled with hers and took no care to be gentle. His fingers tore at the fastenings on her red dress, then suddenly she had broken the kiss, gasping for breath with her lips pressed against his jaw. "Denna."

Darken had forgotten his Mord'Sith, the one who had helped them both to this place. Glancing up, she was still standing by the door, waiting for an order. And not bothering to hide the lust in her eyes.

Kahlan pulled back slightly, eyes clouded with arousal and daring. "She deserves this too..." Her fingers dragged down his chest, nails scraping his bare skin.

He could have believed in a Creator then, and thanked her for bringing them where they could reach full potential in this twisted life together. But all he did was grin with shared plotting, and gesture with one finger for the Mord'Sith to join them. Then he was pulling Kahlan back to him, dragging the dress from her shoulders and lowering his mouth to her pale skin. Kahlan gasped in pleasure and tipped her head back as he tasted her, tongue running over every faded agiel-mark on her neck and collarbone. Her hands, as greedy as his, slid over every muscle of his back once she'd stripped his robes entirely.

And Denna was there. Kahlan moaned slightly as the Mord'Sith stripped faster than seemed possible and moved behind her, pressed close and moving her body with the sleek sensuality that only a Mord'Sith possessed. Denna finished removing Kahlan's dress as Darken's mouth found her breasts, and with a throaty noise Kahlan was then arching back, Denna's breasts against her back and their hips sliding together. The Mord'Sith's mouth descended to Kahlan's neck after a grateful look cast in Darken's direction, and she sampled the woman she'd spent so much time and effort on these past weeks.

With a desire fueled by a lifetime of abstinence, Kahlan raked at Darken's back to urge him on, each breath falling heavily from her parted lips. And he was lost in exploring her body, biting one of her erect nipples when she scratched him, suckling at her soft flesh until she moaned desperately and clung tighter. He could smell her, earthy and sharp, like a dark Mother Nature in his arms—and he could smell Denna just behind her, musky perfume carrying a hint of spice.

Every sensation sent blood straight to his loins, and all rational thought died a sweet death in the arousal. He gripped Kahlan's hips to his, grinding, leaving fresh marks on her breasts as he was too hasty in his homage of every inch of her. She was beautiful. Darkness, damage, warping—nothing could diminish the strong inner beauty radiating with every move of her body.

Denna wrapped around the Confessor and pushed her towards Darken to close any gap between their bodies, Kahlan arching and letting loose primal moans of pleasure with not a drop of passivity anywhere in her. No words were needed to explain that she loved the feel of their skin against hers.

Denna's hand slipped between them, dipping to the apex of Kahlan's thighs, and she laughed wickedly over Kahlan's shoulder as the other woman shuddered and groaned at the touch. "Oh Lord Rahl, she _wants_ you."

Before he could answer, thinking of the way his cock throbbed against Kahlan's thigh, the Confessor suddenly growled with a flash of her eyes, "I do." She pushed him back on the bed, an order and not a suggestion, demanding fingers reaching for the buttons of his trousers. "You, Darken Rahl, Lord of D'Hara, tyrant and monster and ruthless conqueror." The desire in her voice was like molten steel. "I want you inside me."

It was worth more than a chorus of praise. He could think of nothing else as she and Denna stripped his trousers, as the Mord'Sith pushed Kahlan forward, as the once-Mother Confessor straddled his thighs with careless lust in her eyes. They were alive together.

Power and hunger took him over and he grasped her hips to drag her down on him. Her back arched, and he felt the slick heat of her core clench around his length as he filled her, all the way to the hilt. White-hot pleasure sparked up his spine; he grunted, holding her tight against him, eyes on hers to watch the swirl of Confessor magic in them that was held in check by the radahan. Even unleashed, it could have been no more powerful than the pure physicality between the three of them.

Fingers splayed over Kahlan's hips as she swayed above him, Darken started to thrust, driven by nothing but need. He watched her breasts heave with every gasping moan of a breath, only to be covered by Denna's hands as the greedy Mord'Sith moved behind Kahlan to take what she could get. Lips parted, Kahlan's eyes slipped shut and she moved with them, riding him hard, taking him in with every thrust and still moaning every time Denna kissed and sucked at her neck, kneading her soft breasts with talented hands.

Darken Rahl lost track of time as they rode together, bodies entwined in a messy tangle that was nothing less than perfect. Time lost meaning. The world lost meaning. Nothing but fire and friction, sound and sensation, counted at all.

They claimed each other with pleasure, Denna and Kahlan and him, and it could have been an eternity for all he knew before Kahlan was crying his name and shuddering about him, triggering a release that made him clench his hands bruisingly on her hips as his own bliss soared.

Then, once he could see again, Denna's blue eyes met his pleadingly and he moved a hand from Kahlan's hips to between the Mord'Sith's legs. She was slippery with desire, and a few quick thrusts of his fingers into her had her clinging to the woman in front of her and shaking in orgasm.

Kahlan lay on his chest after that, breathing heavily without saying a word. Denna shifted to lie on her side next to them, a hand resting between Kahlan's shoulder-blades, also silent. He didn't know what there was to say.

Except.

Except that for a few moments of ecstasy, there had been no darkness in any one of them. They'd driven it away for just long enough to taste satisfaction. Lord Rahl, master of all he surveyed, finally had everything. He and his Confessor and his Mord'Sith were surviving. Together.


End file.
